Paper given at the United Nations International Conference on Civil Society in Support of the Palestinian People New York, September 5, 2003

Everyone pooh-poohs the road map. From State Department and other "quartet" officials through the office of Ariel Sharon to international activists and the average person on the streets of Palestine and Israel, one would be hard-pressed to find a single believer in the "road map." From the start it has been dismissed as another failed initiative, joining a long line from Mitchell and Tenet to Gunnar Jarring and the Roger's Plan. But is it? In my view the road map possesses a significance that has been lost even on its adherents.

If The Road Map Fails: Permanent Apartheid

Looked at from the ground up, from the perspective of Israel's completion of its three decade campaign to create irreversible "facts on the ground," the road map represents the last gasp of the two-state solution. This is the crunch. As anyone who has spent even a few hours in the Occupied Territories readily understands, Israel has entered in the last phase of fully and finally incorporating the West Bank into Israeli proper, of transforming a temporary occupation into a permanent state of apartheid.

Sharon's implementation of Jabotinsky's doctrine of the "Iron Wall" establishing such massive "facts on the ground" that the Palestinians will despair of ever having a viable state of their own has reached its critical mass. The Israeli settlement blocs are so extensive, their incorporation into Israel proper by a massive system of highways and "by-pass roads" so complete and the Separation Wall physically confining the Palestinians to tiny cantons so advanced as to render any genuine two-state solution impossible and ridiculous. Given the unwillingness of the international community to force Israel's withdrawal from the Occupied Territories and in particular the American Congress's refusal to countenance any meaningful pressure on Israel, we may say that Israel is on the brink of emerging as the world's next apartheid state. Only the road map, the last dying breath of the two-state solution, stands between the hope of Palestinian self-determination in their own viable and truly sovereign (if tiny) state and the de facto creation of one state controlled by Israel. Rather than merely another failed initiative on the way to yet others, we must view the road map as a watershed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Its final failure will alter fundamentally the entire nature of struggle for a just and sustainable solution to the Palestinian issue.

Settlement building and confiscation of Palestinian land on the West Bank and Gaza hasn't ceased since it's occupation began in 1967. It increased significantly after the Oslo Treaty was signed in 1993. Also, Israel depends significantly on 80% of the West Bank's water supply, whose aquifer's are located in areas that the settlements were, by design, built on. What has ever happened since the occupation began or since the Oslo Treaty was signed to give one reason to believe this will all be undone?

From the article:

"As an Israeli, I must say that the prospect of a single state encompassing our two peoples challenges rather than threatens me. Even without the Occupation, the notion of a Jewish state is demographically impossible, and Israel faces a fundamental transformation. Most Jews some 75% of them never came to Israel. Wherever they had a choice, most Jews preferred to migrate elsewhere. The Jewish majority stands at only 72% and is dwindling in relation to the growing Palestinian-Israeli population, the influx of some 400,000 non-Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and large-scale emigration (it is estimated that up to a half million Israeli Jews live permanently abroad). Maintaining a "Jewish" state on such a narrow base is becoming increasingly non-sustainable. The measures Israel must take to ensure its "Jewish character" are becoming progressively more repressive. By law "non-Jews" are forbidden to buy, rent, lease or live on "state lands" 75% of the country. The Palestinian citizens of Israel, almost 20% of the population, are confined to 2% of the land. Only a few weeks ago the Knesset enacted a law preventing Palestinian citizens of Israel from bringing their spouses from the Occupied Territories to live with them in Israel. An Israel belonging to all its citizens and beyond that, a democratic state of Israel-Palestine will finally release us from the preoccupation with the "demographic bomb" and lead us into a productive involvement in the wider region. This "homecoming," after all, was a cardinal aim of Zionism, as was the creation of an Israeli culture and society that will only flourish under conditions of regional development. The Saudi offer of regional integration indicates that such an eventuality is indeed possible."

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